Rickshaws and Dhaka
While thanking Mr Sohel Ahmed for his concern about my agony (DS,21 Sept) and for his forthright comments in his last letter where he had confirmed that Dhaka had only 7% road area instead of normal 25-30%, I am quite disappointed at some of the points he has made. Blaming the recent past generations for just producing children and not paying attention to the problems of the city is, in my opinion, hitting below the belt.
Is he not aware of what sort of governments we have had in the past? From downright autocratic to soft demo-crazy to dictatorial! Have the common decent people and civic society ever had any say in development work that was carried out by rapacious goons, corrupt administrators and lawmakers who were most often lawbreakers?
Dhaka's traffic nightmare is the result of total centralization of government, the corrupt nature of contract businesses, the merging of our main industry around the centres of power and utter ineptitude of the controllers. Verily, it is said that the first refuge of the corrupt with 'black money' is the car showroom. Two hundred thousand private cars descending on Dhaka's ill-kept, pot-holed, narrow and dark streets during 2002-06, 5,000 awaiting clearance at Chittagong, another two ships on the way and over 100 being registered every day, L/Cs galore and banks waiting to bank-roll you at the drop of a hat and you have the perfect recipe for the “soup” that we find ourselves in!
Certainly, rickshaws will die a natural death, but only when there is suitable and adequate alternatives to cater to the mobility of the vast majority of Dhakabashi and not before. Mr Sohel is disputing the evidence of his own eyes when he says that rickshaws cause cars to engage in jams, air and noise pollution everywhere. But the worst is seen and heard on roads that have been rickshaw-free for years!!! Come with me (on a rickshaw) Mr Sohel and I will take you on a short tour of Gulshan and Banani's side-streets and lanes that are full of parked cars. Here it is the huge gas guzzling monstrosities that obstruct rickshaws and not the other way about.
'Poor' Kolkata has a modern efficient subway running down its spine, innumerable taxis that do not refuse fares and buses that do not belong to museums. Yet even here the private cars (the result of India's booming economy) cause the most horrendous traffic jams. In this so-called Utopia of a modern metropolis, the humble hand-pulled rickshaws still survive and offer service to thousands in the backwaters and narrow lanes. Mr Sohel, you can wait for 20 years for Dhaka' illusory Mega Transport System, but tell me, how do I go home today?
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